Is Israel Sovereign?

Roy

On Limited Human Sovereignty

"This is another funny term from Political Sciences," I told myself when I began writing this article. After all, no one of the humanly recognized sovereign entities can decide that the sun would rise on the west tomorrow. In theological terms, the only possible sovereign is God. Yet, to make this text clearer, I adopted the definitions used in Political Sciences texts and the media.

Tricky Definition

A short definition of the term says that sovereignty is the right to exercise the highest authority by the law within a specific territory. The key point is the exclusivity of jurisdiction; when a decision is made by a sovereign entity, it cannot generally be overruled by any other authority.

The current notions of state sovereignty were defined in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, and include territorial integrity, border inviolability, and supremacy of the state rather than the Church; the sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority. Another important change occurred by the end of the 18th Century, when the American Constitution of 1787 and the French Revolution of 1789 shifted the possession of sovereignty from the king to the people. However, how can such a power be recognized?

On Internal and External Sovereignty

There are two parameters that allow recognizing the existence of sovereignty: internal and external.

Internal sovereignty refers to the relations between the sovereign and its own subjects; it deals with the question: by what right does the sovereign exercise authority over its subjects? In the past, the most common answer was by divine right, nowadays a social contract (like a Constitution) is the norm.

External sovereignty concerns the relationship between sovereigns. Foreign governments recognize the sovereignty of a state over a territory and its denizens, or not. This parameter is not exact; in the near past the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China claimed sovereignty over the same territory. Different countries adopted different answers on the issue.

External Sovereignty is Secondary

This fluidity in the definition of external sovereignty shows that the internal sovereignty is more important and is – de facto – the defining quality of sovereignty. A state can exist without external sovereignty, but it would fail without internal one.

Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign possesses no territory or its territory is under occupation by another sovereign. It happened to the Holy See during the annexation of the Papal States by Italy in 1870 and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, when it was recognized as sovereign and was granted the Vatican City. After it lost Malta to Napoleon, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta rules only over two properties in Rome, but is widely recognized and even is an observer at the UN. Occupied European countries during WWII were still recognized as sovereign.

Even under these strained condition, these entities kept their sovereignty because their subjects recognized it and fought for it. If having lose the people's support during the occupation period, they would have been effectively terminated, as it did happen with many political entities during human history; under this test, the sovereignty awarded by the people had been proved as being more stable than the one relying on a king. The last disappears more easily, especially if the king and his heirs are killed in a war against other sovereign.

Thus, the key issue while testing sovereignty is its support by the people comprising it.

Acquisition of Sovereignty

In modern states – those defined by popularly invested sovereignty – the acquisition of sovereignty by the state is defined by a social contract, often based on a single document – called constitution – which is ratified by the people and later expanded into laws by a legislative body. This is the case with countries defined as democracies; the UK doesn't have a constitution but it did replace it with a legal tradition spanning many centuries.

Thus, the people are the source of all political power. Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." Thomas Jefferson – in a similar statement – said in 1799: "The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself" (both quotations from http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0300.htm).

Did the State of Israel Sign a Social Contract with Its Subjects?

On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly decided to divide Palestine between Jews and Palestinians and became the base of the external recognition of the State of Israel by other sovereign entities.

On May 15, 1948, Israel's Declaration of Independence was issued by a small group of people – lead by David Ben-Gurion – who did not get popular consent for that. The declaration was never ratified by popular vote, though it was recognized by several other states.

The new state never issued a social contract. Israel has no constitution, and thus never ratified one. That means the State of Israel never got its people's consent to be a sovereign entity – in other words, a state. The recent Base Laws legislated by the Knesset – the Israeli Parliament – are a fig leaf. The state claims they are the base for a future Constitution, but they do not cover key issues like human rights, are subject to arbitrary changes due to special needs of the coalition governments and – most important of all – were never ratified by the people. In a secondary issue, the entity doesn't have a defined territory; there are neither internal nor external resolutions awarding the Stateof Israel a well defined territory. A problem deriving from the last is: Who are the sovereign's subjects? Again, the State of Israel fails to fulfill the basic requisits to become a sovereign entity.

Is Israel Sovereign?

Under these circumstances, the external recognition of Israel is baseless; the recognition of other sovereigns – especially those defining themselves as democracies – of a non-ratified entity which has obviously not been invested by God contradicts their own social contracts and thus would not stand a serious test. The internal recognition of Israel is not an issue since it has never been ratified by its subjects.

State propaganda over the local and international media cannot change the simple fact that the State of Israel is not a sovereign entity.